Some other time.

His eyes tracked from her pretty feet, up over the narrow ankles, up the long length of her legs and…ah. There it was, the source of all delight.

Here, too, she was perfection itself. A little cloud of pale brown pubic hair surrounding puffy pink tissues that, yes, thank you, God, glistened. It was official. She was turned on. He could get going.

Well, one last thing.

Nick let go of her ankle and ran his fingertips up her leg, enjoying every inch of the trip. She was smooth and warm and entrancing. He slowed his hand down to savor the sensations, watching her eyelids droop a little.

Oh yeah. Her cheeks were tinted pink now, as were her nipples. He could see her heartbeat in her left breast, rocking the soft tissues. She was getting turned on by his finger on her leg.

Oh, and maybe what she could read in his eyes.

“Nick,” she whispered.

“We’re getting there,” he answered. Oh God, this was just such a delight.

Finally, his hand arrived where it wanted to be, against her soft little cunt. She was wet and getting wetter by the second. His finger was enough to call up moisture out of her body, which he spread against the lips of her sex. He dipped his finger into her, just a little, and felt her jolt and sigh. He pressed his free hand against her knee, pressing it closer to the bed, opening her more for his touch.

The instant she understood what he wanted, she spread her legs for him. Nick could barely tear his eyes away from her—pink and puffy and soft.

Her eyes were closed now and he knew she must be concentrating on the sensation of his hand on her, at times in her. She sighed.

He could keep this up forever, just touching her lightly in the silence of the night, but when he glanced down at himself, he realized he’d better do this the old-fashioned way before he blew all over her belly and embarrassed himself and her.

He was enormous, red and swollen and hard as a club. His hand was having a good time and his head was, too, but his cock was protesting.

Do it right or I’m out of here.

Okay, he told his dick. It always had been a hard-ass.

Keeping his right hand cupping her cunt, he leaned his left hand on the mattress, right next to her sharp little hip bone and mounted her.

Now the sensations changed. He no longer felt a dreamy sort of pleasure, as if in a daze. Now the feelings were sharper, harsher, keener. Acute and hard-edged.

No more slow, dreamy motions, no more enjoying her with all his senses. Now he had only one sense and that was concentrated between his legs.

Using two fingers, he opened her up, fitted himself to her and thrust, harder than he intended. He gritted his teeth against the pleasure, holding his shaking torso up on one arm so he wouldn’t crush her, breathing hard through his nose.

Jesus, she was tight. Incredibly tight. A little blood drifted back up into his head. He frowned. Too tight.

He looked down at her. She looked uncomfortable, almost in pain. Goddammit.

“Charity,” he croaked. “Please tell me you’re not a virgin.”

She looked up at him, appalled. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “It doesn’t grow back, does it?”

A laugh exploded out of his chest and somehow exited his cock and he collapsed on to her, laughing and coming in equally excited bursts.

Vassily stared into the fire, listening to the silence of the house. Normally, he listened to music at night. Some nights it relaxed him enough to sleep. Most nights, though, he sat in his armchair, hoping to keep the memories at bay.

He didn’t want music or vodka or even the company of one of his men.

He needed her, needed to talk to her. Oh how he longed for that connection with Katya—with Charity. That soft female energy wrapped in such a beautiful package, truly a gift of the gods. Katya had been his soul mate; she’d kept him going when he sank into his depressions.

He felt completely bereft, half a creature. He’d thought his heart and soul had died with Katya, but this new Katya revived them. He was whole again. Once Katya was completely his once more, he would turn back the clock. He had the power to do what only the gods could do, bring back his Katya.

Charity.

He cursed. Lately he’d caught himself several times calling Charity Katya. He stopped at the first syllable and Charity though he was calling her a cat.

He covered up by saying she reminded him of a cat. Elegant, self-contained, graceful, with brilliant clear eyes. She smiled every time.

And yet—and yet she was Katya. Nothing would convince Vassily that Charity wasn’t the reincarnation of his very heart.

He hadn’t been able to save Katya. She’d been tossed into a pitch-black hole with ravening sharp-toothed monsters at the bottom.

The scene came to him nightly, with a drumbeat of slick sweat and panic. The scene was always the same. The frozen tundra stretching for eternity, gray and featureless, the strongest fence imaginable—ten thousand miles of frozen nothingness. No one had ever escaped alive across that endless, frozen fence.

The prisoners—most sick, dehydrated, half starved, and without enough clothes for the subzero temperatures—had been herded out from the train wagons like cattle. Blinking dazedly in the meager winter sunlight, the first sunlight they’d seen in ten days, they’d tumbled out of the freight wagon on unsteady limbs, half dead already merely from the journey.

Vassily had tried to shield Katya as best he could through the endless journey. He’d given her his coat and had maneuvered her against a wall with his back to the pack to give her a modicum of privacy.

He had no food or water to give her, nor comfort. They both knew what was coming. They’d heard the stories. Vassily had once interviewed a zek from Stalin’s camps for a newspaper article.

They knew.

Katya knew.

They spoke little through the endless journey. There was little to say.

Vassily had done his best to hide Katya from the guards when they stumbled down the ramp, but it didn’t work—couldn’t work. Katya moved like a beautiful woman.

He’d put his coat over her head and ordered her to walk hunched over, like an old lady. But Katya’s beautiful ankles had been visible. And snatches of her glorious pale gold hair slid out from the tight bun to curl around her shoulders.

Vassily’s heart sank when he heard the first guard cry out, a wolf scenting fresh meat. In a second, the whole pack had descended, ripping her out of his arms, carrying her away, meat for the night.

Vassily could still hear her screams, see her slender white arm outstretched, drowning in a sea of louts. He’d fought, as hard as an intellectual could. But these were brutal men, one step up from the prisoners they guarded, and used to violence. One blow from a guard’s rifle butt and he went down like a felled bull.

He gained consciousness to the sounds of Katya’s screams. They lasted all day and all night. Through a small window in the freezing hut where the new zeks had been herded, Vassily could see the guards lined up, most with their pants open, rigid cocks out. Waiting for their turn to fuck the beautiful Moscow intellectual. Laughing and smoking. Going right back to the end of the line once they’d had their turn.

Some hadn’t seen a woman in decades.

By the second day, the screams stopped.

Vassily had been utterly helpless to save Katya. A zek in a prison camp was nothing, not even worth the air it breathed. Less than the dirty snow on the bottom of a prison guard’s boot. Less than the shit in the latrines.

He’d lost Katya, but now he’d found her again. Katya had come back to him. And he wasn’t a helpless zek now, oh no. He was rich and powerful beyond measure. He commanded billions of dollars, thousands of men and women. He bought the governments of countries and bent them to his will.